President Obama’s annual budget request to Congress will propose a significant change in how the government pays to fight wildfires, administration officials said, a move that they say reflects the ways in which climate change is increasing the risk for and cost of those fires.

Soon after starting work at Lincoln Elementary in Paramount nearly five years ago, second-grade teacher Lisa Lappin became alarmed by the number of teachers and students sick from cancer and other illnesses.

President Obama arrived in the heart of California’s parched farmland on Friday afternoon to offer tens of millions of dollars in federal assistance to the state, where the lack of rain and snow this winter has led to the severest drought in its modern history.